Well, I need some major encouragement! For the past month I've been eating lots of veggies and fruits, cut down on my meat sugar and starches intake, up'd my water intake, and started walking about 3 -5 miles a day, and my pants are getting tighter not looser!!! My sister is getting married in September, and I'm a Bridesmaid. I just got my dress, that she picked out for me, and she was worried it was going to be too loose, but it is too snug! I feel like a walking blimp! Anyone have any suggestions as to what I could do differently??? I'm really discouraged that I haven't made any progress at all in the past month, I actually think I gained, not lost! *sigh*

All of the changes you made are REALLY good, healthy lifestyle changes, so please don't lose sight of that!

However, when it comes to losing weight, you have to burn more than you eat, bottom line. If you don't know how many calories you should be eating to enable weight loss, and if you're not tracking them, it's hard to say whether or not you should have been losing weight.

Taking the excellent changes you've already made, now add a little calorie analysis to your program. It doesn't have to be drastic or be complicated. If I were you, I'd continue to eat and walk as you normally do for a week, and track everything you eat in www.fitday.com. This will give you a great picture -- complete with pie charts! -- of what your current intake is. Then you can look at how your calories are distributed, and if you need to cut back in a certain area, or just a little overall. If you want a ballpark estimate of how many calories you might shoot for for safe, gradual weight loss, check out http://www.jimkaras.com/loss_math01.cfm.

The other thing that can help burn calories throughout the day is weight training. Adding muscle while you lose fat will increase your resting metabolism AND make you slimmer overall, even if your weight doesn't change that much.

Good luck, and keep plugging away. I know you're frustrated right now, but you've made such a great start to lasting health, you just need to go to the next level now.

Another possible reason that the pants are getting snug is if you were a couch potato and went to walking 3 to 5 miles a day, you could be building up muscle. If that's the case, by September, you should notice quite a decrease in your weight and the snuggness of the pants if you keep at it. I'd say that whether or not this is part of the reason for the snuggness has to do with whether or not you were previously sedentary and whether you are putting a lot of effort into your walk or just casually strolling. If you're not actually speed walking and weren't previously sedentary, then it may be the calories in/out as funniegrrl suggested.